


Sifting Through Cinders

by Dusty_Forgotten



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 18:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4189842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dusty_Forgotten/pseuds/Dusty_Forgotten





	Sifting Through Cinders

“What exactly are you lookin’ for, again?” Butch questions.

“A gun.” the Lone Wanderer replies, digging with her bare hands. “Magnum, I think it was a .44.”

“And _why_ are you digging through this mound of dirt for a shitty gun, again?”

“Not dirt, Butch. Ashes.”

And that’s when he realizes it. This whole mound of smoky-smelling grey dust they’re standing on, it isn’t cement rubble. It’s human ash. He throws up in his mouth a little.

“It will not fire if you should recover it.” Charon cuts in, having been a silent observer for a while now.

“I’ll clean it.”

“If it was loaded when cremated, the cylinder will be ruined.”

“I’ll replace it.” she replies simply.. The Lone Wanderer pauses for a moment to wipe her forehead with the back of her hand, streaking it grey, before she goes back to work.

“Oh, come on! What’s so important about this stupid gun that you’ll spend a half hour looking for it?”

“It was my dad’s.”

Butch and Charon exchange a glance, and the ghoul shoves him forward, pushing the greaser to his knees in the soot. Charon slings his shotgun over his back, and starts sifting through the dust. Charon was with her, at the rotunda. He met James, shortly before his death. He had on his person a vault suit, baseball bat, and a magnum. Everything but the gun would have burned.

The three of them kneel there in the ash pile behind Jefferson Memorial another forty-five minutes, sifting through cinders.


End file.
